


start of something new

by spj



Category: K-pop, VIXX
Genre: Fluff, M/M, basically just fluff, cutesy shmootzy stuff, preslash, some more stuff i wrote a while back but never really finished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4107217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spj/pseuds/spj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is a story of how they got to know each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	start of something new

**Author's Note:**

> once again i couldnt finish the thing five years ago so here it is! sad n incomplete

The thing everyone forgets is that Hongbin actually knew him—from before, that is. Oh, not very well, so maybe in the long scheme of things it doesn't really matter, but the point is is that Hongbin did know him. From before. They lived within walking distance of each other, had gone to the same middle and high school, although they didn't take many of the same classes.

Hongbin was a kid alright all around, taking the hardest of the math and sciences because he had nothing better to do. He didn't play a sport or an instrument, although occasionally he and his friends went out to play basketball, and likewise just generally had no hobbies.

Ken was precisely the opposite. He had entered their school system halfway through middle school and had shot all the way to the top of the totem pole—and stayed there. Funny and charismatic, it had seemed as though the world was his domain. The guy was popular, brilliant, passionate and driven, and as an added bonus, had grown into his body early, so he looked more like a man than the teenager he was. He was an artist. A real, honest-to-god artist, with a fashion sense that would have been ridiculous on everyone but himself, quirks that no one bothered to explain, and a randomized sleeping pattern that could rival the dead.

Hongbin thought he was beautiful.

They had been in the same English class for two years, and year after year, Hongbin had nearly never said a word in the class, just listened to Ken think out loud and lead himself to some brilliant conclusion or another. It seemed like that's what he was always doing—fading bright lights into their dull school, and just like everyone else, Hongbin had been drawn by Ken's intensely burning energy and couldn't look away, captivated by the blazing trail and wandering hopelessly after in the smoking debris. Hongbin knew Ken was too good for him.

Which is why Hongbin, along with the rest of the school, was shocked when Ken chose a mediocre research college with no real merits in studio art instead of a shiny liberal arts school. Hongbin heard that Ken's art teacher had asked if this is what he wanted, and he had said yes. Had asked if it was his parents, and he had said no. Had asked if he was trying to ruin his future in the arts and that for once, Ken had no answer prepared.

It was then Hongbin thought to himself for the first time that maybe he didn't know Ken. Maybe nobody did.

 

Hongbin loses track of Ken after graduation.

It wasn't something that really _bothers_ Hongbin per se, but it's unlikely he'll ever see Ken again. It wasn't worth it to actively pursue something that would never come to fruition anyway.

So Hongbin has to pinch himself and ask two of his classmates to verify that he indeed is not hallucinating when Ken Lee walks into his photography class at the beginning of his second semester of sophomore year.

“Do you know him?” he asks Steven, who had taken the first series photography class with him.

“Him? Yeah,” Steven says easily. “That's Ken Lee, right? Although why anyone would want to pick an English name forever chained to the Barbie franchise is beyond my guess,” he adds, laughing.

“Ken Lee?” Hongbin asks, just to make sure.

Hannah from his other side snorts. “You deaf? Yeah, that's Ken. He takes singing lessons from the same grad student as me. I see him waiting outside in the hall sometimes—he's usually late. Real charmer, that one.”

Hongbin hums in agreement, watching Ken select a seat across the room from him, away from other people. “He goes to this school?” Hongbin asks, at risk of being repetitive.

“Yeah,” Steven affirms before Hannah can break in with her favorite jibe about the differences between his face and intelligence. “You've never seen him around? He's pretty popular around here; joined an a capella group last year and then left it after their last concert. It was big news.”

“Was it?” Hongbin doesn't keep up with these sorts of things. His freshman roommate had been a big a capella fan but didn't talk to him all that much beyond the obligatory “Can you turn off the lights now?” so Hongbin never heard any of the gossip.

“He doesn't really need an a capella group, though,” Hannah muses. “I've stuck around after my lessons to hear him sing. He's really good, and has the face and charisma to go with it.”

“Ah,” Hongbin says, and wherever his brain was going to lead him next is lost as the professor walks in and slams a pile of papers onto the front table.

“Trash!” she says, and the lecture begins.

It's just the first day and all they really do is read the syllabus with as much pain and dedication as if they were only five and just learning how to pronounce the written word, so Hongbin peeks over his paper at Ken every few seconds. Did he have rings under his eyes before? Was he darker? Hongbin can't remember, and wonders just how important Ken had been to him in high school for him to have forgotten like this. Next to him, Hannah starts humming _Single Ladies_ , and Hongbin kicks her.

Hongbin isn't sure what to do with himself after class ends. Normally he follows Hannah and Steven to lunch but he feels an obligation to Ken, at least out of propriety—maybe to make himself known and introduce himself, or maybe just to apologize for being such a quiet stalker in high school. He doesn't know.

“Pretty sure he swings for your team as well as mine, single lady,” Hannah tells him as he's hovering by his seat and slowly gathering his things. “Your face should be enough to get him at bat.”

He's too slow in swatting at her, and she darts out of the room giggling like a madman. Hongbin smiles because it's impossible not to, but it drops off his face just as easily.

He's still staring at his things, weighing the pros and cons of being considered a stalker when he hears, “Need some help?”

Hongbin turns around to see Ken grinning at him, indicating his papers and pencils, which are still scattered across the table. Hongbin stares. Maybe it's the distance, maybe it's the two years of perspective, but he sees now that it's too small, Ken's smile. He doesn't know if he should trust it. “Ah, no,” he says just in time sound as though there was no hesitation, and turns back to pack up. “Thanks.”

When he turns back around, he finds Ken had been waiting for him, smile still in place. “Hongbin, right?”

Ah, so Ken came over to do the same thing Hongbin had awkwardly waited around to consider. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Ken? Ken Lee? High school, I remember.”

Ken grins. “Yeah, fun times.”

“I'll bet,” Hongbin says wryly. Ken follows.

They walk together out of the art building. “I never saw you around though,” Ken says, and it's almost a question as much as it is a demand for an answer.

“We probably took different classes,” Hongbin says, trying his hardest to sound reasonable and not like a stalker.

Ken makes an understanding noise. “Ah, were you a science kid? I did a lot of art in high school, so that might be why.”

“Uh, yeah. You're doing art now?” Hongbin inclines his head back towards the art building.

Ken shrugs. “Maybe. I'm concentrating on my voice lessons. Anthropology seems alright. Econ.”

“Second semester sophomore's cutting it a bit close. Don't we have to submit our majors by the end of this year?”

“I'll figure it out,” Ken says confidently, and Hongbin lets the subject drop. Then Ken says, “So what are you doing?”

“I'm pre-med, now.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Hongbin makes a face. “I'm not sure there's a single one of us who actually likes this.”

“Then why do it?” Ken asks, and sounds genuinely curious.

They've stopped walking, and the real interest in Ken's voice has pushed Hongbin into thinking seriously. There are a lot of reasons for him to do this—his desire to help people, his parents, his lack of interest in anything else—but not one of them is quite what he means. He looks back up to meet Ken's eyes. Ken is watching him carefully, not accusatory, not anticipatory, just watching, waiting, passive. “I guess I'll figure it out,” Hongbin says eventually.

Ken cracks a smile. “Guess you will. But I'm starving!” he declares, some of his old energy falling over his eyes again. “Wanna go grab some food? Pleaaaase?” he begs when Hongbin is silent with awe and amusement, and Ken pulls an expression he probably thinks is cute but Hongbin thinks is a bit constipated.

“Sure,” he says. “Why not.”

And so Hongbin knew Ken.

 

Ken insists they exchange numbers after lunch because, “You look like you lack some awesome in your life, Hongbinnie, and I'm the one that can make that happen.” Hongbin's never been all that great at saying no.

He doesn't really expect Ken to actually contact him, though, and is surprised when just two days later he gets a call from _Ken <3_.

“Hey! What're you up to, Binnie?” Ken's voice sounds pixilated, but somehow he's managed to push a large fraction of enthusiasm through the phone.

“What if I'd been in class?” Hongbin wants to know, ignoring the question.

“Then you would've ignored me and I'd have called back later,” and Hongbin can hear the shrug. “Anyway, dinner! I require sustenance!”

“It's three in the afternoon.”

“Dinner!”

Hongbin's never been all that great at saying no.

Which is how, at three-thirty in the afternoon, he finds himself sitting across from Ken in one of their school dining halls, watching Ken shovel down pizza while he picks at his salad.

“I can never understand how people even manage to eat the pizza here,” Hongbin muses. “It tastes like cardboard plus cheese.”

Ken gasps and pulls the pizza away from his face. “I'm sorry baby,” he coos at it. “Hongbinnie didn't mean it. I looove youuu,” he sings, and then pushes the pizza into Hongbin's face. “Apologize to baby,” he demands.

“What?” Hongbin's not sure if he should feel amused, but he can feel the smile tugging at his lips anyway.

Ken pouts. “She's sad because you called her ugly. Apologize, because my baby's nothing but the most beautiful in the world, isn't that right?” He makes the pizza nod. “Exactly.”

“You're eating her, though,” Hongbin points out. “I think that's worse than pointing out the truth to, uh, her.”

Ken's eyes curl up into crescent moons. “I eat her with _love_ ,” he says, and then grins.

Hongbin can see the euphemism coming from a mile away and stops Ken right there. “No,” he says, and takes a big bite of his salad, chewing as loudly as he can to better show Ken he doesn't want to hear it.

“I _looveee youu_ ,” Ken sings again, ignoring Hongbin's glare, and stuffs the rest of the pizza into his mouth.

“You're disgusting,” Hongbin tells him, but he's smiling and he doesn't really mean it in a bad way.

Ken smiles like he knows. “I'm fantastic,” he says.

Hongbin believes him.

 

So they start to do this thing, where they have lunch or dinner together a few days a week. Ken gets to know Hannah (“You're a lot dumber than your voice.”), Steven (“Don't mind Hannah, she's just cranky today.”) over a few dinners, usually after Steven's lacrosse practice and before Hannah's theater rehearsals.

In return, Hongbin meets N over a few lunches, who talks Hongbin's ear off until he wants to cheerfully and lovingly strangle the man, and Ken's eyes sparkle like he knows what Hongbin's thinking.

(“Yeah, I met him through a capella,” Ken says.

“We got along really fast,” N chimes in. “I like the weird ones,” he says, smiling, and Ken pouts at him.

“I'm not weird!”

“Yes, you are,” Hongbin says, his grin daring Ken to disagree.

Ken grins, and then shrugs. “You're weirder,” he says petulantly. “Both of you.”

N laughs. “Never said otherwise.”)

Usually, though, it's just Ken, calling until Hongbin answers the blinking _Ken <3_ with fond annoyance.

“You know no one calls anyone anymore,” Hongbin says when he answers the phone. “People just text, now. You do know what that is, right?”

Ken laughs. “Yeah. But I'm old school,” and Hongbin can imagine the crescent moons in his eyes.

“Either way, I was in the library,” Hongbin tells him. “I had to sprint outside to catch the call—don't you have WeChat? Or email?”

“Nope, calling's better!” Ken sings. “That way I get to hear your beautiful voice!”

Hongbin rolls his eyes. “Says the guy who's basically a voice major.”

“Yeah, well,” Ken says, and now he sounds stilted, broken. It mends together seamlessly, though, so quickly Hongbin isn't sure he heard anything different when Ken asks, “Dinner? Food!”

“Yeah, sure,” Hongbin says, “as long as it's not pizza again.”

“Fiiiine,” Ken says, an edge of a whine surfacing. “Let's go to the Pit today.”

“What? So you can take another bite out of a burrito and not like it and make me finish it for you? Not likely.”

“Okay, Mister Picky-Pants, what did you have in mind?”

“The Barrel,” Hongbin says. He's been thinking about this for a while, now. Ken's also from the area but his lack of any knowledge related to food that's not Korean makes Hongbin think that he's never been to anywhere but Kimchi Palace, and Hongbin cannot, in good conscience, let Ken survive his second year of college without having tried some of the best wings in the state.

“Off campus?” Ken asks, disbelief coloring his tone, and Hongbin remembers that for all they've had meals together this semester, they've never actually hung out otherwise, and definitely not off campus. If they met up for lunch or dinner they'd meet at the dining hall, and while they ate Ken would say weird things to his food while Hongbin chewed in relative silence.

If they went off campus, they'd have to walk together and Hongbin would have to say more than just commentary, would have to keep up an _actual conversation_. The thought doesn't scare him as much as it might have otherwise. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “I mean, it's Friday, but if you're busy, that's cool—”

“You _loooove_ meeee!” Ken bursts out in song. “Hongbinnie actually _liiiiiiiikes meeee_ , _woooow_ so _coool_ , Hongbinnie!”

“Shut up,” Hongbin says, and Ken laughs.

They meet at the South exit, where they'll have to walk about twenty minutes to get to the Barrel. “It's worth it,” Hongbin says as they leave. “They have some of the best wings in-state.”

“I wonder why I never heard of it?” Ken wonders.

Hongbin nudges him in the side. “You only eat at Kimchi Palace, remember? It'll be nice to cleanse your palate once in a while.”

“Cleanse my what-what?”

“Eat different things,” Hongbin clarifies, although he has a suspicion Ken already knows this and is just making fun of him. “It'll be good, you'll like it.”

Ken pouts. “I would have been fine with the burrito.”

“No, you wouldn't have,” Hongbin says. “Remember how you had to down an actual packet of soy sauce to get rid of the taste?”

Ken gasps. “Hongbinnie! I thought we agreed to never talk about that again!”

“That was the mustard,” Hongbin says. “Soy sauce is fair game.”

“Traitor,” Ken pouts, but Hongbin just laughs.

The conversation is not as awkward as Hongbin would have feared, and Ken keeps it flowing with his incessant chatter about exactly nothing. Hongbin learns that Ken hates coffee, really likes dried mango, and has a cat back home.

He gushes, “She's really cute, but she'll scratch your face off if she doesn't like you.”

“Ah,” Hongbin says. “So your life at home must be very painful.”

Ken starts laughing. “Ah, Hongbinnie!” he says. “You're so much meaner than you look!”

“I am not! I'm only saying the truth no one else will,” says Hongbin, laughing.

He didn't think anything of it, but Ken's smile slips at the edges, just a bit, and his teeth, so straight and white, seem to fray, before it falls effortlessly into a whine. “So cruel, Binnie, to say I'm not cute!” He pouts again, this time sticking his lower lip out so far he looks like a failed Botox experiment.

“You're not. You just try really hard,” says Hongbin honestly, and that sets Ken into another round of caterwauls that later, when Hongbin tries to remember, slip away from him quietly.

 

Hongbin never pays much attention to Ken's words. It's not that Ken doesn't say a lot, because he does, too much, even, and it's not that he never says anything worth listening too, because he does, his ironic and ridiculous voices throw them both into raucous laughter more often than not. It's just that Ken's words aren't where _Ken_ is. Hongbin remembers the brightness of Ken's crescent moon eyes, and the braying timbre of his laughter. Hongbin remembers how Ken smiles—like a woven painting that's just too, too old. Mostly he remembers how Ken stays silent, eyes dropping to the ground and mouth falling along with them—not sad, not worried, just silent. It's quiet.

 

Ken takes Hongbin out for bubble tea after their first run of midterms.

“I think I failed the photography project,” Ken moans into his hands. “I was almost positive I'd gotten away with being just outside her parameters, but she gave me this _look—_ and her looks are _scary_!”

Hongbin makes soothing noises that he doesn't think are working. “There, there,” he says anyway, because damned if he's not going to try. He pats Ken on the back with the hand that's not holding his bubble tea. “She's an artist. She'll understand that you wanted to work on something else.”

Ken makes fake-crying sounds into his hands. “I'm gonna _faiiill_ ,” he wails dramatically.

Smacking Ken gently on the back of his head, Hongbin says, “And if you do, it'll be in the name of good art. Now drink,” and he shoves Ken's bubble tea into his face.

“You're a menace,” Ken complains, snatching the drink from Hongbin's hand.

“You reap what you sow,” Hongbin quotes back, serenely taking a pull from his drink. He chews on his bubbles, swallows. “All of this would be your fault.” He waves the bubble tea around. “It's turning out well for me, in case you were wondering.”

“Screw you,” Ken says, smiling, and this one is small and mirror-thin.

He stands up, so sudden that Hongbin's head snaps back trying to follow. “Huh?”

Now Ken beams. “Let's go watch a movie!”

“What? No.”

“Pleeeaaaasee?”

Hongbin's always been terrible at saying no.

They end up at Hongbin's dorm, since his roommate is out partying and won't be back until late. “I have Netflix,” Hongbin says, pulling his laptop towards himself. “What do you want to watch?”

Ken kicks back. “What do _you_ want to watch?”

“If that's what we're going to do, I'm going to pick _Princess Diaries_ just for you _.”_

“Oh my god, no, _Hongbinnie_!”

Hongbin ends up choosing _High School Musical_ instead, mostly to spite Ken, who's lounging on his bed like a ruffly dog, but also to spite his neighbors, who are having loud and irritating sex next door. Let's see if they can keep it up through a warbly rendition of _Fabulous_. He turns it up.

Hongbin is actually not capable of _not_ watching a movie, even if it's one he's despised since his older sister played it nonstop for a couple of months back in middle school, scarring him forever, so it's not until halfway through the first number that he notices two things. One, the sex next door has stopped. Good. Two, there aren't only two voices, but _three_. He glances over to see Ken's lips barely moving, but he's definitely singing along.

Ken's eyes flick up and catch his.

 _No, wait, keep going,_ Hongbin wants to say, but his voice is stuck somewhere back where he left his brain, so he just prods at Ken and jerks his head up.

Ken's eyes sparkle without curving—or maybe it's just the reflection from the laptop screen—and then he opens his mouth again and starts singing. For real, this time.

His voice is simple and sweet, unlike everything else about him, clear, easy to understand. Ken has to turn back to the screen to follow the lyrics, but Hongbin keeps watching him, thinking how for the first time Ken seems focusedand _in place_. It's like the noise that's surrounded him from day one has fallen away, leaving him clear, simple, easy. And Ken has never been easy.

“Wow,” Hongbin says over the sound of Gabriella and Troy exchanging numbers. “Dude, you're—you’re _really_ good.”

Ken laughs, says, “Thanks. I'd hate to think all the time I spent at lessons went to waste,” and he winks.

“Sure,” Hongbin says, because he's sure Ken's voice would be just as good with or without but can't think of a non-creepy way to say so.

Ken doesn't seem to notice, though, and he starts humming _The Start of Something New_ until Hongbin reaches over and flicks him, dissolving into laughter.

 

Hongbin doesn't consider himself a very complicated person by any means. He has one sister who's always taken care of him, and two loving parents who want to do right by him, whatever that means. At home, he has a dog and a goldfish and a bookshelf full of books he used to love as a child. In his downtime he likes to sip green bean bubble tea and read mystery novels, or take walks around the less populated areas of campus. The list of things that make up Hongbin is a short one indeed.

Hongbin considers Ken a complicated person. He's almost positive Ken has an older sister, although it may be that he has another one, or a younger one as well. Ken never talks about his parents. He knows Ken has a cat, but other than that he's not entirely sure, and he's never seen Ken with a book, textbook or otherwise. Aside from the times they go out to eat, Hongbin doesn't see him on campus.

Hongbin doesn't worry about it. Any of those things isn't really important in the long run.


End file.
